Monday, June 1, 2009

The Low Down on Stretching

When and how much to stretch is always a question that comes up in physical therapy. I will usually encourage my patients to perform a dynamic warm-up prior to their regular exercise of choice and then perform static stretches after exercising.

For those who are not familiar with these terms, a dynamic warm-up basically means you spend 10-15 minutes going through the motions of the exercise you are intending to complete, but at maybe 25-75% in order to make sure your tissue is warm. Static stretching, on the other hand, is what most of us think of as stretching and includes holding a particular stretch position for 30 seconds to 2 minutes.

A recent article from the Running Doc gives a good summary of current stretching recommendations that can be useful not only for runners, but for the rest of us as well.